Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, for a long time, people opposed to climate action said that tackling climate change would be too costly, would harm economic growth, would be bad for American businesses, and would kill jobs. It turns out these were phony arguments peddled by fossil fuel interests. It turns out they are flat wrong. It turns out that actually the true economic hazard is not climate action but climate inaction. We have recently seen an explosion of warnings from economic regulators, central banks, insurers, investment firms, and risk analysts that we face economic peril if we fail to address climate change. These are not green groups; these are neutral business and economic experts--the people whose job it is to protect us from risks to financial stability and the people who make a business calculation about what we stand to lose from unabated climate change. Their warnings are many, and their warnings are serious. One example: Just last month, Moody's warned that climate change will increasingly disrupt and damage critical infrastructure and property and will hurt worker health and productivity across the globe. Moody's, the credit rating giant, estimated--hang on--$69 trillion. We talk about millions around here pretty readily. We talk about billions when we are talking about really big money. Moody's estimated $69 trillion of economic damage globally by 2100, even if we limit global warming to only 2 degrees Celsius. The Presiding Officer and I are probably not going to pay a lot of that. The pages will. We are not currently on track for only 2 degrees Celsius; we are currently on track for around 3 degrees of warming, which Moody's said would put us at further risk of hitting tipping points beyond which lurk far larger, more lasting, and more ominous dangers. Here is another example: In May, the European Central Bank warned that climate change presents significant economic risks to the economy, to asset values, and to financial stability. The longer we wait, the longer we fiddle around in this Chamber not doing anything, the more it will cost to protect ourselves in the future. That old saying about a stitch in time saving nine applies here as well. The ECB said that these risks could cause what they called ``systemic issues,'' especially where markets do not price climate-related risks correctly. ``Systemic issues'' is a bland term. It is central banker- speak. What it means is something pretty serious. Systemic issues means this is so bad that it could take down the entire economy. The European Central Bank is not alone. The Bank of England has been warning of systemic risk from climate change or from not doing anything about climate change for some time now. I think there are now over 30 sovereign banks that have made or adopted such warnings. Just last week, Senator Schatz asked Federal Chairman Powell whether severe weather is increasing due to climate change. Powell did not equivocate. He said simply: ``I believe it is, yes.'' That is the leader of the most influential bank in the world accepting without hesitation a major threat to our financial system, echoed also by a Federal Reserve report out of California. Climate change, they point out, is a major threat to our financial system, to everything from coastal real estate values, which Freddie Mac predicts will crash, to stock market share prices, about which there are numerous adverse predictions if this goes unchecked. America's biggest financial institutions see what is coming. In the House Financial Services Committee hearing in April, CEOs from six of America's biggest banks agreed that climate change is a serious risk to the financial system, and they said they are trying to take action to address that risk. There is an unfortunate sidebar, however. Big American banks that claim to support climate action include four of our biggest banks: JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Bank of America. These banks all supported the Paris Agreement. In 2017, the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America even signed a letter urging President Trump not to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. These banks are all trying to reduce their own emissions, and all have commitments to get to 100 percent renewable electricity--all good steps. But the biggest direct impact these banks have on climate is not through the promises they make but through the investments they make. On that score, these four banks are steering us to climate calamity. A group of environmental organizations released a report in March adding up fossil fuel financing by 33 large, private sector banks from around the world. These four American banks--JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Bank of America, which all support the Paris Agreement and are all reducing their own carbon emissions--they are the four largest funders of fossil fuel projects. Combined, they invested over $580 billion in new fossil fuel projects over the past 3 years. JPMorgan was the worst, with $196 billion of fossil fuel funding in 3 years. JPMorgan was also the top U.S. funder of tar sands, Arctic oil and gas, and coal mining--the most emissions-intensive fuels. The big American banks accounted for over a third of the surveyed global fossil fuel financing since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. Worse, their investment in fossil fuel projects actually increased after the Paris Agreement. Wells Fargo nearly doubled its fossil fuel financing from 2016 to 2018. Obviously, these investments in new fossil fuel projects do not align with the banks' stated support of the Paris Agreement. The math doesn't work. The Paris Agreement aims to limit warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. A study just published by Nature shows that the world's existing fossil fuel infrastructure will emit enough carbon pollution to blow us past 1.5 degrees of warming. The authors wrote that little or no additional CO2-emitting infrastructure can be commissioned. Little or no additional CO2-emitting infrastructure can be commissioned if we are to meet the Paris Agreement climate goals. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the article titled ``How Much Global Warming Is Fossil Fuel Infrastructure Locking In?'' from Inside Climate News be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks. That is the math. If the banks are true to their stated support of the Paris Agreement, they should not finance any new fossil fuel projects--unless, of course, they also finance capturing all the carbon emissions, and they are not doing that. It is true that these banks have announced goals to increase their financing of clean and sustainable projects, but they are only goals, and combined, even their goals only amount to around $100 billion per year, which is about half of what they have actually invested in fossil fuel projects each year since Paris. Citi even released a report finding that maintaining our current fossil fuel-heavy economy would cost more than moving to clean, low- carbon economy--cost more to stay in the fossil fuel economy than to move to a clean energy economy--and they said that is not including factoring in the economic damage from climate change, which Citi reckons could total $72 trillion--$72 trillion under business as usual. Citi projects that transitioning away from the projects they are investing in to a low-carbon economy will save money on its own and it will help avoid tens of trillions of dollars in further economic damages. Yet they aren't investing consistent with their principles. According to the International Monetary Fund, fossil fuels are subsidized to the tune of $650 billion per year in the United States. So there is no question that this massive subsidy--probably the biggest subsidy in the history of the planet--makes investing in fossil fuels profitable. But the contradiction remains. These banks all say they support the Paris Agreement. They all recognize that it is economically vital to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement. Yet their investments would ensure that the Paris Agreement fails. It would help banks change their ways if companies had to disclose their climate risks better. I just joined Senator Warren in a bill we have done to require publicly traded companies to reveal their exposure to climate-related risks. But we have a proposal--Senator Schatz, Senator Heinrich, and I--to help resolve the very root of the banks' contradiction: that Congress put a price on carbon emissions and an end to fossil fuel subsidies. Indeed, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recommended this in the House Financial Services Committee hearing in April. When asked whether his bank will phase out fossil fuel funding and align its investments with the goals of the Paris Agreement, he said: ``If you want to fix this problem, you are going to have to do something like a carbon tax.'' So, bankers, help us do that. If these bankers think climate is a serious problem--and they say they do--and that putting a price on carbon pollution is the solution, which virtually every economist agrees with--hello, you need to come here and fight to make it happen. Banks have political influence. Lord knows, they never stop throwing their influence around here when it comes to financial regulations or tax giveaways. Where are they in Congress on climate? It is a long pause waiting for them to show up. So, guys, talk is cheap. Come on. Put a little effort into this. Pretend it is a financial regulation. The carbon fee bill of Senators Schatz, Heinrich, and Gillibrand would help these banks align their investments with their stated goals. Our bill meets the key standards of being effective on carbon emissions, driving far more reductions than the Clean Power Plan, revenue neutral in the economy, and border adjustable for trade. It meets all three. Plus, it will help avoid the dreadful economic warnings now so frequently heard from very responsible sources about doing nothing--warnings of coastal property values collapsing, warning of a carbon asset bubble crash, even warnings of big storms breaking the bank of the insurance system. To Citi's credit, it is a member of the newly formed CEO climate dialogue group which will, I hope, become a strong advocate for a Federal price on carbon pollution. That is the place where essentially every economist--huge numbers of Nobel Prize winning economists, many Republicans, former economic advisers to Presidents, former Treasury Secretaries, former EPA Administrators, former Members of Congress-- have all come down. It is pretty clear what the solution is: It is a price on carbon that is revenue neutral and border adjustable and will reduce emissions enough to keep us under 1.5 degrees. That is not hard to figure out. It is getting there that is hard because, so far, the net pressure of corporate America in Congress remains hostile to climate action, whether from indifference by companies themselves or, worse, from the hostile presence of corporate trade associations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, two leading business lobby groups recently outed as the two worst climate obstructors in Congress. The last I checked, a clean and green economy involved a lot of commerce. And building a new clean grid and new clean technologies, whether wind or solar or batteries or storage or distributed generation, was a lot of manufacturing. We still await the explanation from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers why they are 100 percent aligned with the denial and obstruction of the fossil fuel industry and 0 percent aligned with their membership who, in many cases, are leaning in to climate action. There is a separate flotilla of front groups doing the dirty work of the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry doesn't want to show up and identify itself as the fossil fuel industry; then the game is too obvious. So they put up all these front groups with ridiculous names about Heartlands and Heritages and famous figures, and they are front groups for fossil fuel. All those groups add to the corporate pressure against climate action from the Chamber and from NAM. So for banks like these, who claim to take climate change very seriously, it would really make a difference if they would take an interest in climate change, not just on their websites, not just in their talking points, but in their investments in the market and steered away from fossil fuel and into clean energy and in their influence here in Congress. We have to crack this nut here in Congress. There is no pathway to avoiding climate calamity that does not require Congress to act. Congress must act if we are going to get ahead of this problem. It is not optional. You can't shrug as a business leader who cares about climate and say: No, we are just going to do our thing; we don't need to worry about what happens in Congress. There is no pathway to avoiding the climate crisis without action in Congress. The fossil fuel industry knows that. That is why they are here, red in tooth and claw. The sensible, honorable parts of the business community that want to do something about climate change need to show up and push back because, otherwise, the hydraulics are against us. At this point, the science is clear. The economics are clear. The warnings are serious--systemic risks--and they are many. Neither our planet nor our economy can afford massive investments in new fossil fuel projects, not by them, not by anyone. Time is short. We can no longer afford corporate America to be AWOL on climate in Congress. It is time for these banks and the rest of corporate America who want to see progress and avoid what all those warnings are telling us to wake up and to show up.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, it is a great honor to join my senior colleague, Senator Reed, on the Senate floor to remember someone we both knew very well, Jim Taricani, a legendary investigative reporter, whom not only we knew well but so many Rhode Islanders knew well. There was a rule in Rhode Island: When Jim called, you answered. He was also tough. He was always fair. He was the founder of WJAR's I- Team, a storied investigative unit for the NBC affiliate in Rhode Island. Jim started working as a reporter in the 1970s, when the New England mafia was still active on the streets of Providence. He became known for segments exposing organized crime and for sniffing out public corruption, and, at times, a bit of a combination of both. Jim's news sense and his doggedness were legendary. Jim was a Rhode Island icon. In a small State, with more than its share of stories to tell and plenty of larger-than-life characters, investigative journalists have always had a particular prominence. For more than three decades, Jim was among the best of them all. He was brave. When a Federal judge ordered Jim to divulge who had provided him with a tape of a bribe being accepted at Providence City Hall, he opted for a prison sentence rather than give up his source. The courage of Jim Taricani made national headlines. He ended up serving 4 months of home confinement and testified before Congress in 2007 in support of a Federal shield law to protect the freedom of the press. Rhode Islanders felt a personal connection to Jim for another reason. Jim needed a new heart in the 1990s. After having suffered two heart attacks in his thirties, he shared this health saga on the air, allowing WJAR cameras to follow along as he underwent a heart transplant and navigated his recovery. From living rooms and kitchen tables across Rhode Island, Rhode Islanders rooted for Jim. As his health improved, he ultimately returned to the newsroom. The transplant would give him 23 more years, which he called his bonus. Jim passed away last month at the age of 69. With the free press under more strain than almost any other point in our Nation's history, Jim's funeral became a really important moment. The photo Senator Reed just showed on the front page of the Providence Journal the next day was a sight to behold. More than 50 journalists showed up to serve as Jim Taricani's honor guard. The honor guard had dozens of reporters from across Rhode Island--not just from WJAR but from all of its competitors too. Journalists came from other parts of the country who had crossed paths with Jim at channel 10 during time they spent in Rhode Island. They had come back to see off a friend, a hero, and a staunch defender of the First Amendment. I join Senator Reed today in thinking of Jim's beloved wife, Laurie White, and the many friends of theirs who mourn Jim's passing. He will be missed. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we have just heard two colleagues make convincing and compassionate arguments for putting a price on carbon, the central protection from climate crisis. A price on carbon like we propose would dramatically lower emissions and put us on a net-zero-by-2050 path, the path necessary to avoid the worst climate chaos. Because it is a price on pollution, we can dial it up or dial it down as climate chaos worsens or abates. Because our proposal is border-adjustable, it would let American industry compete even in countries without a price on carbon. Because our plan is revenue neutral, all the funds go back to the American people in the form of payroll tax credits, Social Security or VA benefits, or grants to States to navigate this transition. If our plan is so good, you might think it would already be on its way to becoming law. You might think there would be Senate hearings on it or bipartisan negotiations. Well, none of the above. To understand why that is taking place, you have to look at who is supporting carbon pricing and who is opposed. Let's start with the good news. Who is supporting it? Earlier this year, 27 winners of the Nobel Prize in economics--27 Nobel prize- winning economists--15 former Chairs of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, more than half of them marked here in red are Republicans; 4 former Chairs of the Federal Reserve, half of them Republicans; and 2 Treasury Secretaries, including a Republican, in the Wall Street Journal, no less, endorsed a border-adjustable price on carbon with revenues returned to the American people--in other words, a carbon price very like our bill. Even the patron saint of conservative economists, Milton Friedman, himself a Nobel Prize winner, made the case that it is proper under conservative economics for government to put a price on pollution. [T]he best way to do it is to impose a tax on the cost of the pollutants . . . and make an incentive for . . . manufacturers and for consumers to keep down the amount of pollution. Four former Republican Administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency--for President Nixon, President Reagan, and both President Bushes--advocated for a price on carbon in the New York Times. There is burgeoning support in the business community. In May, dozens of companies, with a combined market cap of nearly $2.5 trillion, came to Congress to advocate for a price on carbon. CEOs of 13 major corporations recently announced the formation of the CEO Climate Dialogue to do the same. All these CEOs and corporations may be responding to an explosion of warnings coming from economic regulators here and abroad, national banks here and abroad, government agencies here and abroad, and risk analysts, who do this kind of thing professionally, that we are headed for economic perils if climate change is not addressed with an effective, predictable remedy, like a price on carbon emissions. Last month, even Pope Francis convened a 2-day summit at the Vatican on climate change, where he urged governments, businesses, and oil companies to get serious about climate change and to follow carbon pricing as the smart path forward, calling it ``essential.'' By the way, to do a little moral wander here, Pope Francis is not alone among religious leaders in seeing a moral imperative to solving this problem. The head of the Church of England said that ``[r]educing the cost of climate change is essential to the life of faith. It is a way to love our neighbour and to steward the gift of creation.'' Two hundred thirty-two evangelical pastors from 44 States declared that ``[l]ove of God, love of neighbor, and the demands of stewardship are more than enough reason for evangelical Christians to respond to the climate change problem with moral passion and concrete action.'' Forty-three rabbis from around the world stated that ``Jewish teachings mandate that we do everything possible to help avert a climate catastrophe and other environmental disasters and to help shift our imperiled planet onto a sustainable path.'' Likewise, leaders and scholars of the Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths have urged climate action, including pricing carbon. With all this support, particularly from so many Republicans, you would think that carbon pricing would be a no-brainer and that we would be already at work here in Congress doing something. Unfortunately, if you thought that, you would be wrong. The bad news is who is opposed to carbon pricing and what dirty tools they bring to that job. Here is one example: Last month, hints of interest in carbon pricing appeared from a few House Republicans, and suddenly an ``open letter'' appeared opposing carbon pricing. The letter was signed by all these entities with happy-sounding names like Americans for Tax Reform, Americans for Prosperity, Citizens Against Government Waste. Such nice names. You might think this letter represents grassroots popular opposition to carbon pricing. You would be wrong. These groups have a common identifier: They keep their funding sources secret. But skilled investigative journalists and researchers who spent countless hours digging through corporate tax filings and other documents have unearthed the funders. And guess what. The vast majority of these groups are funded with fossil fuel money. They are front groups. They are not real. We actually added it up. The groups behind this letter received collectively over half a billion dollars from groups linked to the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers, ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and other fossil fuel interests. It is a complete front. Half a billion dollars is a lot. Remember, that is just what the researchers could find. Because these front groups hide their funding so well, the true number is probably several times that, probably billions of dollars. It sounds disgusting, doesn't it--an industry hiding behind front groups to spend billions of dollars to gum up a remedy to our climate crisis? But why wouldn't the fossil fuel industry spend a few billion dollars to block climate action here in Congress? The annual U.S. subsidy for fossil fuel was most recently estimated by the International Monetary Fund at $650 billion. Against that fat annual subsidy, spending a few billion is just a rounding error. Look at one example from this flotilla of phony front-group signatories: Americans for Tax Reform, with its president Grover Norquist, which claims to represent the regular taxpayer. Hogwash. Americans for Tax Reform has received over $5 million from Koch-linked groups--Koch Industries, the big fossil fuel company--and over $800,000 from the American Petroleum Institute. They are hired guns, and they are wearing masks so you don't know who is paying them. That group is just one tentacle of the fossil fuel climate denial apparatus. They have even taken over the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers and turned those business groups into fossil fuel zombies on climate change. It is time to say enough. I ask my colleagues to please take a sincere look at climate change and carbon pricing and look at who is saying what. On one side, you have the moral authority of the great religions. You have bipartisan agreement of the world's best economists. You have lots of Republicans--at least ones who don't have to face elections. You have lots of tough, smart business leaders. My God, you even have your home State universities that teach this stuff. On the other side, you have a bunch of hired guns, hiding behind phony front-group masks, funded with fossil fuel money that they try to hide. Who are you going to trust? Pope Francis or the oily, secretive Koch brothers? Milton Friedman or fossil-fuel hit man Grover Norquist? The International Monetary Fund or ExxonMobil, the company that has been caught out lying for decades about climate change over and over again? Front groups who hide their donors--isn't that a clue? Can we as a body, as the Senate, really not discern where the conflict of interest lies, where the record of lying lies? The climate crisis is real, and it is accelerating. Bad as it is already, we are just in the opening credits. It is getting worse. The pages sitting here on the Senate floor know this. The rest of their lives will be spent coping with the consequences of our failure, the failure of the grownups--the sickening failure of the grownups. We have to get going here. We are trying to do it your way. Pretty much every Republican who has thought this climate problem through to a solution comes to the same place: a revenue-neutral, border-adjustable price on carbon. That is what we offered. We can't come much further than that. We are reaching out. We are trying to do it your way. But the answer back can't be dictated by a fossil fuel industry that has spent billions to deny and obscure the facts, an industry that to this day fights from behind a facade of lies. I tell my Republican colleagues, they have lied to you and lied to you, and you should cut them loose. We are all just back from the Fourth of July. How about an independence day for the Republican Party from the rotten rain of the fossil fuel industry? Just cut them loose. Let's do the job we have been entrusted with as Senators. Let's look at the facts. Let's look at the reality. Let's look at what our home State universities teach and what real businesses in America are telling us. Let's do our job. On our part, we have reached over as far as we know how. We know nothing more that we can offer than the terms that Republicans have proposed when they work this problem through to a solution. We said yes. Is there really not one of you who will reach back and start to solve this problem? I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Connecticut and I be allowed to engage in a brief colloquy.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Well, clearly, when it comes to climate change, this administration is embarrassing itself and our country with the factually and scientifically preposterous claims that they make, and the nonsense denial that they continue to propagate is going to be, I think, a lasting blot on our country, as the rest of the world looks to us for leadership and sees instead more fossil-fuel-funded denial and treacherous political behavior by the industry that guides, very often, the hands of people in government. So from that point of view, it is a complete train wreck. From the point of view of helping the fishing communities, they have actually been taking it on the chin for a while. I will say a good word for the fishing communities. I think they have really tried to do their best. When we asked the fishing community to consider moving to a catch shares type of regulatory model, a lot of them didn't like it, but a number of them tried it, and they realized they actually could make it work and it actually improved their business prospects. So that move has been one that has not been easy for them to make, but more and more they have made it, and they have been able to see how it works better for them to be able to share catches. If somebody is out at sea having a great day, instead of having to go back in, they can get on the radio to somebody and say: I am having a great day out here. It is cheap for me to stay out here. I will keep fishing if you will give me some of your catch. You can stay home. And they work out the deal over the radio. That has been a good thing, but, again, it is not easy for them. And they have also really stepped up, as Senator Blumenthal knows so well, in our regional ocean planning, the offshore planning. The fishermen have come forward, and they have participated. They have been, I think, very fair and productive. Unfortunately, the manner in which the Obama administration rolled out the offshore marine monument was a bit of a blow to the trust that had been developed, but they had participated in good faith. I have good things to say about what our fishing community has tried to do to keep up. But no matter what you try to do as a fisherman, if you have an abundance of black sea bass--if it is so abundant that it is going into lobster pots to eat the bait and you are pulling up black sea bass in lobster pots, if you are pulling it up in your trawls--and you find that you can't keep this fish, you could go to the dock and you could sell it for several dollars but, no, you are obliged to throw it overboard because you can't bring it in. It has already been probably a little bit compromised, particularly if it has been caught in the trawl. So it is not likely to survive very long when you put it back in the water. So you are not really helping anybody by throwing it in. You know it is valuable. You know there are a lot of them. You know you are throwing them back injured or having difficulty surviving or, very often, dead. I have seen them just go twirling down through the water. You wonder, who is looking out for me, because this does not make sense? This does not make sense. The science supports what they are saying. NOAA has known for a very long time that this black see bass population was moving northward. This was only 2014. It is even further north from there. Nothing is more frustrating than not being taken seriously, and I think we need to take the concerns of our fishermen seriously. Of course, one way to do that is to take climate change seriously and not listen to this nonsense about it being a Chinese hoax and not have a bunch of really creepy eccentrics from the climate denial stooge community brought into government and actually given positions as if they were legitimate.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me conclude by thanking Senator Blumenthal for his leadership on this issue. Our fishing communities have a powerful voice in Senator Blumenthal. He has worked with them for many, many years in the Senate and before, when he was attorney general. It is a great honor for me to share the floor of the Senate with him today. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is a great honor and pleasure to join the senior Senator from Connecticut on the floor today. We were both U.S. attorneys. We were attorneys general together. We now serve in the Senate together, and I consider him a friend outside of my day job as well. It is terrific to be here with him. It is also a happy coincidence that a Senator from another great fishing State, Louisiana, should be presiding while we speak about our fisheries. This is my 247th of these speeches. Rhode Island, of course, shares a border with Connecticut, as well as a proud fishing heritage and connection to the sea. Whether you are walking the docks of Stonington and New London or of Newport and Point Judith, the story from our fishermen is the same--that these are not the waters that our grandparents, parents, and great-grandparents fished. One fishermen told me: ``Sheldon, it's getting weird out there, and it's a big economic deal that it's getting weird out there.'' In 2017, commercial fishery landings from Connecticut and Rhode Island totaled over $114 million, and that was just the landings. That was not the ancillary fishing economy around it. Carbon pollution and warming, acidifying oceans put that whole economy at risk. Earlier this month, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that by 2100, around 17 percent of all ocean life, by biomass, will disappear. In February, the journal Science found that since 1930, we have already lost around 4 percent of our harvestable seafood due to ocean warming, and the fish that we are still able to harvest are getting smaller due to warming temperatures and depleted oxygen levels. A 2017 study warned ``the body size of fish decreases 20 to 30 percent for every 1-degree Celsius increase in water temperature,'' and the water is warming. Oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat that has been trapped by our greenhouse gas emissions. Of all of the excess heat that has been trapped by greenhouse gas emissions since we began the Industrial Revolution and started burning all of these fossil fuels, 90 percent of it has gone into the oceans. How much is that? The Federal Government's 2017 Climate Science Special Report from NOAA, NASA, the Department of Energy, and others found that the oceans had absorbed more than 9 zettajoules of heat energy per year. What is a zettajoule? A zettajoule is 9 billion trillion joules. They are not jewels like your grandmother's earrings. They are joules as a measure of energy. From 1998 to 2015, the oceans had absorbed more than 9 billion trillion joules. That is a rate of more than 12 times the total energy use of humans on the planet. If you want a more vigorous, a more kinetic description of what that heat load is like, visualize the power of a Hiroshima-style atomic bomb with its classic mushroom cloud erupting into the sky. Imagine all of that energy from that nuclear blast being captured just as heat. Now imagine four Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs exploding every second. That is the excess heat that is going into our oceans from climate change--more than four atomic bombs' worth of excess heat energy being absorbed by the oceans every second of every day of every year. That is a lot of heat energy, and adding it to the oceans has consequences. The global average ocean surface temperature was already up around 0.8 degrees Celsius, or 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, since before the carbon pollution of industrial times began, and the rate is accelerating. According to NOAA, ``the global land and ocean temperature departure from average has reached new record highs five times since 2000.'' The rapid rise in ocean temperatures is forcing species that were once southern New England icons to abandon our waters for cooler, deeper, northerner seas. A 2018 NOAA-funded study warned that hundreds of commercially valuable species are being forced northward as oceans warm. For Rhode Island, squid is now king. In 2017, around 60 percent of the longfin squid and 63 percent of northern shortfin squid caught in the United States were landed in Rhode Island. According to NOAA, Rhode Island's share of the catch was valued at over $28 million. In my State, that is a big deal. Remember, that is just the landing value. That is not the surrounding economic value. Climate change is putting that--our precious calamari--at risk. Squid is Rhode Island's most valuable fishery with its having accounted for nearly 30 percent of all of our States' landings, by value, in 2017. Rhode Island once had a booming lobster fishery. The lobster population shifted north as our waters warmed, and it left Rhode Island's lobster traps empty. NOAA reports what we already know: ``The lobster industry in New York and southern New England has nearly collapsed.'' Maine is temporarily benefiting from the northern movement of lobster, but the lobster is expected to keep moving north, into Canada, as we keep warming the oceans. In January, the Washington Post ran this amazing piece as part of its ``Gone in a Generation'' series. It featured the stories of Rhode Island and Maine lobstermen who deal with our changing ocean. New England's fishermen also see declining shellfish populations. The total landings for eastern oysters, northern quahogs, soft-shell clams, and northern bay scallops all declined 85 percent between 1980 and 2010. NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center identified warming ocean temperatures as the culprit. As climate change warms the oceans, all of that excess CO2 in the atmosphere chemically acidifies the oceans as 90 percent of the heat is absorbed by the oceans and 30 percent of the CO2 is chemically absorbed by the oceans--out of the atmosphere and into the seas. It acidifies the oceans, and for many species, that is a double whammy. Sea scallops were one of the Nation's most valuable fisheries and Connecticut's most valuable species in 2017 landings. So let's look at that one. Ocean acidification and warming both trouble sea scallops. Scallops and other shellfish extract calcium carbonate from ocean waters around them in order to build their shells. Acidic waters decrease the chemical availability of that compound, and if you actually get it high enough, you actually dissolve the shells of living creatures. In 2018, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution warned that ocean acidification ``could reduce the sea scallop population by more than 50 percent in the next 30 to 80 years under a worst-case scenario.'' While we in the Senate struggle to free our Chamber from the remorseless political grip of the fossil fuel industry, our fishermen pay the price. The oceans are warming too fast for us to respond to rapid changes in fish stocks. So, in our States, black sea bass and summer flounder--both species mentioned by Senator Blumenthal--are poster children for this disconnect. He mentioned his fisherman Bobby Guzzo in the article from Greenwire, and Rhode Island's fishermen are telling me exactly the same thing. The Science Director for NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center says, ``Much of our management assumes that conditions in the future will be the same as they have been in the past,'' but that is no longer true. We are already so off base from historical trends and data that we can no longer rely on that history to forecast where fish populations will be. So black sea bass and summer flounder head north toward cooler waters from the Mid-Atlantic States, which used to be the home base. You would think, as they did, that it would make sense for the catch allocations of that fish to move northward with them. The blue is the base of where most of the black sea bass food stock existed back in the seventies. Up here is the base right now. That is the Chesapeake Bay. There is Rhode Island--there at the hook of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. It is a big move up into our space, but did the catch limits move up with it? No. Southern States were unwilling to give up their quotas, which left our fishermen in Connecticut and Rhode Island to fish our northeast waters with an abundant catch they couldn't harvest. Imagine the frustration as Rhode Island, Connecticut, and other New England States don't have a vote on a critical fishery management council that makes this decision to put our fishermen at a severe disadvantage to fight for their right to the fish that are now settling up here in southern New England. Our fishermen have to throw back valuable fish from lobster pots and from nets because our fisheries' management rules haven't caught up with their ocean reality. We have to update how we manage these shifting fish stocks as climate change moves fish populations around. We must speed research and catch limits to match what fishermen actually see in the water. Our fishermen and our coastal economies depend on it. I am very grateful to Senator Blumenthal, my outstanding colleague from Connecticut, for joining me today. Together, we will continue to fight for a day when our Rhode Island and Connecticut fishermen can foresee their children and grandchildren continuing their long tradition of fishing the seas. We strive for meaningful action on climate change and ocean acidification, for updated fisheries and climate modeling, and for improvements on how we manage these stocks. To save our seas and to save our fishing economies, we must wake up to the threat of climate change and respond to these consequences that real fishermen are seeing in their real nets and boats every single day. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I yield the floor. nomination of rita baranwal

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is my great honor to join Senator Brown of Ohio here on this 50th anniversary. The image of a river aflame is engraved in our collective memory. For Ohioans, for Senator Brown, and for all others who care about our water and environment, the Cuyahoga River remains a rallying cry. Time magazine ran a piece in 1969 calling it this: ``Chocolate brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gasses, it oozes rather than flows.'' No fish lived in it. It was too dangerous for drinking or swimming. ``The lower Cuyahoga has no visual signs of life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes,'' a Federal report said. Virginia Aveni, captain of a vessel charged with cleaning up, told the Plain Dealer that the river ``was a complete gel almost of petrochemicals.'' There was a ``sheen and thickness of the river . . . . it was totally jammed with downfall from upstream'' and had ``every kind of litter you can imagine.'' Today, waterfowl are back, and paddlers enjoy themselves. It has been named River of the Year for 2019. Fish from the river are now safe to eat. A river that inspired a generation to act in the name of our environment has rewarded that effort. By the time a spark jumped off a nearby passing train and lit the river on fire in 1969, it was no surprise. The river had burst into flames 13 times before between 1868 and 1969. This is the most economically damaging fire, in 1952, which cost over $1.3 million--$12 million in today's dollars. An earlier fire in 1912 was the deadliest, killing 5 people. What was different this time? America paid attention. Of course the Cuyahoga was not our only polluted waterway. The Potomac River in Washington, DC, was, to describe it in Time's words ``stinking from the 240 million gallons of waste [that] were flushed into it daily,'' and ``Omaha's meatpackers [filled] the Missouri River with animal grease balls as big as oranges.'' Americans wised up to what we were doing to our planet. We grew tired of unchecked industries using our common assets as their dumps, and things changed. It produced some of the most significant environmental and public health protections in history: the December 1970 establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, the 1972 amendments to the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act, the Ocean Dumping Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Resources Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Toxic Substances Control Act. And, of course, there was the big one--the National Environmental Policy Act. Each one had broad popular support. Each garnered bipartisan support. It is hard to imagine that today, but it happened. The American people have made hard-earned progress protecting our waters in the last 50 years. We want to swim in our lakes. We want to fish in our rivers. We want to drink from our streams. We do not want to go back to the days when rivers oozed, but the Trump administration has the clear aim of allowing industry donors to pollute more and faster. The price for this is paid in our rivers, on our lands, in our oceans, and in our climate. Right now, in our atmosphere and oceans, we are approaching the kind of environmental catastrophe that befell the Cuyahoga, only magnified many times over. Let's ensure that the Cuyahoga did not burn in vain and that the lessons of the Cuyahoga River, Love Canal, Deepwater Horizon, and other preventable disasters are not repeated by us, now on a global scale. We took bipartisan action to protect our environment before. If we can break the devil's grip on the fossil fuel industry here, we can do it again. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Change of Vote

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, on rollcall vote 176, I voted nay. It was my intention to vote yea. I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to correct my vote since it will not affect the outcome.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I came here to make my climate remarks, but I can't resist the opportunity--both as a Senator who actually gets quite a lot of bipartisan legislation passed with my Republican friends but also somebody who sits on the Judiciary Committee--to point out that there actually are quite a few firsts happening that I think help explain why the floor has become a battleground for so many of these nominees. One first has been that this is the first time, I think, in anybody in the Senate's lifetime experience in which the blue slip is not honored for circuit court judges, in which a judge on the circuit court of appeals associated with the Presiding Officer's State of Oklahoma or my State of Rhode Island--we get rolled. We do not have the ability to approve or disapprove those judges. That is a long tradition of the Senate summarily thrown out. This is the first time, I think in the history of the United States, in which the selection of judges is being done by a private group funded with anonymous money. That is a very bizarre way to go about picking judges. That is the way it is taking place right now. In fact, the gentleman named Leonard Leo from the Federalist Society who is doing the picking was admitted by Trump's legal counsel to have been insourced for the selection process. That is a first. We never had a private organization pick our Federal judges funded with anonymous money. Finally, there are some qualified appointees to the bench. I voted for a considerable number, when I thought they were qualified. The problem is, when the unqualified ones come through, they get stuffed through just like anyone else. It is a rarity when we get somebody so flagrantly unqualified as the lawyer who did not know what a motion in limine was--a standard motion before any trial in a Federal court--had no idea what it was. It was actually a Republican Senator who was able to determine that and asked further questions because, frankly, it is pretty astounding to want to be a trial judge and not know what that is. So there have been some firsts, and if we could go back to where we were beforehand, I think we would see a smoother process.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I come to the floor of the Senate today, as I do every year at this time, to remember what Rhode Island abolitionist Frances Whipple McDougall called ``the first blood [drawn] in the Revolution.'' This past Sunday marked the 247th anniversary of the Gaspee raid. This is an image of what happened to the Gaspee. We ought to remember. Most Americans do not know about the Gaspee Affair. They have learned about a far tamer incident in Boston Harbor a year later, when some tipsy Bostonians toppled bales of tea into the water. I get why Bostonians are proud of their tea party. It is a decent story that tea was ruined, the British East India Company was out some money, the Crown got angry, and the American patriots gained notoriety and momentum for our cause. But the Gaspee raid offers so much more--a true villain, a daring escape, a vigorous call to action, the storming of a ship, the vanquishing of an enemy, a blast in the night, and an earlier stirring of revolutionary spirit. The story begins in the 1760s, with King George and the English Parliament trying to raise money. The Crown needed to recoup losses from expensive recent wars, and the Colonies seemed like a convenient place to turn. Their solution was to allow the powerful British Navy to enforce customs laws, transforming naval officers into well-armed tax collectors. The Admiralty commissioned sloops and schooners to troll the Colonies' most profitable waters for tax revenue. In Narragansett Bay the Crown sent Lieutenant William Dudingston in an eight-gun schooner, the Gaspee. The boat and its captain quickly earned a nasty reputation. Dudingston stopped virtually every vessel in sight, from the biggest schooners to the smallest packet boats. He harassed sailors, seized cargo, and annexed Rhode Island vessels, merchants, and watermen, often on shaky or nonexistent charges. Historian George Washington Greene, a Rhode Islander and grandson of Rhode Island's legendary Revolutionary War hero, Major General Nathaniel Greene, described Dudingston's conduct this way: Not contented with performing the duties of his office, still vexatious even when considerately executed, he multiplied its annoyances by a thousand acts of petty tyranny. He stopped vessels of every kind without discrimination--ships just from sea and market boats on their way to Providence and Newport with their perishable freights, and to increase the indignity refused to show his commission or the authority by which he acted. A further insult, Dudingston sent prisoners and cargo to Boston to face justice before a British tribunal, not the Rhode Island court established in Newport. This violated the Colony's agreement with the Crown to adjudicate such disputes on Rhode Island's soil, an offense to our Colony's sovereignty. From winter to spring of 1772, tensions in Narragansett Bay rose. Among the incidents involving the loathed Gaspee, Dudingston commandeered Fortune, the ship belonging to the influential merchant and later Revolutionary War hero, Nathaniel Greene. Rhode Islander Daniel Harrington notes in a 2017 Providence Journal article that ``the patriotic fervor'' that had swept ``the colonies [had] seemed to elude [Greene]--until Dudingston snagged his Fortune and ignited the righteous spirit of resentment.'' When Greene later led the Continental Army's successful Southern Campaign, British General Cornwallis would lament: ``That damned Greene is more dangerous than Washington.'' The ignited spirit was a forceful one. On June 9, 1772, the coastal trader Hannah caught Lieutenant Dudingston's eye as she sailed up Narragansett Bay en route to Providence. The Gaspee pursued the Hannah and ordered her to stop for inspection. The Hannah refused. The Gaspee fired a warning shot. The Hannah sailed on. Off Warwick's shore, near Pawtuxet Village, things came to a head. According to the account of Rhode Islander Ephraim Bowen, the Hannah's skipper, Benjamin Lindsey, sailed his lighter boat over shallows around Namquid Point. Dudingston followed in chase taking his Gaspee, a heavier boat, into waters too shallow for it. The Gaspee ran aground in a falling tide. The Hannah sped on to Providence. Captain Lindsey alerted respected local merchant John Brown, later a founder of Brown University. Brown ``immediately concluded that [the Gaspee] would remain immovable until after midnight,'' Ephraim Bowen recalls, and saw what he calls the ``opportunity offered of putting an end to the trouble and vexation she daily caused.'' A Providence man named Daniel Pearce ``passed along the main street, beating a drum and informing the inhabitants of the fact that the Gaspee was aground on Namquid Point and would not float until 3 o'clock the next morning,'' Bowen recalled. Pearce invited ``those persons who felt a disposition to go and destroy that troublesome vessel to repair in the evening to Mr. James Sabin's house,'' presumably for some strong spirits and discussion of an attack. Once assembled and refreshed, the Rhode Islanders set off into a moonless night in eight longboats with muffled oars. The group's ``powder was prepared and bullets run'' as it ``set forth on its mission of vengeance,'' George Washington Green recorded. Aboard the Gaspee, the seaman standing watch, Bartholomew Cheever, first thought he saw light dancing off rocks in the near-blackness. Suddenly, however, Cheever realized the glints he saw were more than rocks. The Rhode Islanders and their long boats encircled the Gaspee. Cheever alerted Dudingston, and Dudingston ordered his men to fire on the assault party. The Rhode Islanders, however, outnumbered the British crew by more than 4 to 1 and quickly overwhelmed the Gaspee. A brief and decisive melee ensued. Soon, Dudingston lay on the quarterdeck with musket wounds to his arm and groin. The Gaspee would never again be under British command. The Rhode Islanders ferried the British crew to shore, where they were awaited by the Pawtuxet Rangers, a group that exists still today. The raiders then returned once more to set fire to the Gaspee. The fire burned until it reached the powder magazines below the Gaspee's decks, and when the fire reached the magazines, the Gaspee was blown to bits and was no more. King George soon learned of the Gaspee raid and was not pleased. The raiders would face charges of treason, he said, and the gallows, were they to be found guilty and convicted. The Crown put up the colossal reward of 500 pounds sterling for the capture of the rebels--50 times what a colonial farmer would earn in a year. No Rhode Islander would give up the raiders. Try as they might, British authorities never found and never convicted the brave raiders who burned the Gaspee. Word of the Gaspee raid spread swiftly through the Colonies and stirred revolutionary spirit. George Washington was actually hosting a British officer when he heard the story. The officer exclaimed that the Rhode Islanders ought to be ``phlebotomized'' and that he would personally march 5,000 British regulars ``from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina, and put down all opposition to the revenue acts.'' To that assertion, Washington shot back: I question not, Sir, that you could march from Boston into Charleston, South Carolina, at the head of 5,000 British regulars; but do you mean to say, Sir, that you could do so, as a friend, or as an enemy? If as the latter, and you will allow me a few weeks' notice of your intention, I will engage to give you a handsome check with the Virginia riflemen alone. Washington punctuated his retort, as an onlooker reported, by ``[striking] the table so violently with his clenched hand that some wine glasses and a decanter near him with difficulty maintained their upright positions.'' Every year, Rhode Islanders gather for a celebration and parade through Warwick, the neighborhood off of which this event took place. We gather to remember the daring assault on the Gaspee. We recall our forebears' resolve for independence, freedom of religion, and the rule of law. We are also glad to remember that Rhode Islanders are not to be trifled with. This is a story worth remembering. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, one of the things I have noticed over the years that I have given these climate speeches is that corporate engagement on climate change has been one-sided, let's just say. It is clear who my adversaries have been--Big Oil, the coal lobby, the Koch brothers, and some very powerful corporate trade associations--the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the most powerful of all, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, so-called. In my view, it is more properly called the U.S. Chamber of Carbon. These adversaries have managed a big-money campaign, first, to sow doubt about or outright deny climate change and, second, to block action in Congress and Federal agencies to limit carbon pollution. The International Monetary Fund just estimated fossil fuel subsidies in the United States at $650 billion for 2015. Yes, that is ``billion'' with a ``b.'' When you are defending that kind of subsidy, you spare no expense, which explains the millions of dollars spent by the fossil fuel industry and its trade group cronies in opposing climate bills, in supporting phony climate denial front groups, and in funding election attacks against candidates who might try to limit carbon pollution. While the fossil fuel industry has been running roughshod around Washington, the rest of corporate America has sat on its hands. Even companies with gauzy website offerings on climate and strong sustainability policies within the company have done virtually nothing to support climate action in Congress. I could name names, but that would make it a very long speech because, basically, everybody in corporate America has been absent here. There are, at long last, signs that corporate America is waking up to the climate fight it has been losing in Washington. When and if corporate America finally engages in the serious support of climate action, Congress will, once again, spring to life. After a 10-year drought, we could again see bipartisan legislation to reduce carbon pollution. Why this new spurt of corporate engagement on climate change? Look at the avalanche of warnings about the financial risks climate change poses to the global economy. In just the last few months, here are some of the warnings: 34 central banks, including Canada's, France's, and England's; a group of major reinsurers; the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; the investment giant BlackRock; EPA economists and scientists; the Urban Land Institute; the investment advisory firm Mercer; the European Central Bank; and the investment advisory firm Sarasin & Partners. All have separately warned about climate change's tanking the economy. There are agricultural as well as financial warnings. In April, the big food companies--Danone, Mars, Nestle, and Unilever--announced that they would begin advocating for Federal action on climate change. They see the risk climate change poses to the world's agricultural and water supplies. Their preferred solution? A price on carbon: Establish an ambitious carbon pricing system that sends a clear signal to the marketplace to reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions aligned with the Paris Agreement goal to keep global temperature increase well below 2-degrees centigrade. An appropriate carbon pricing structure should be transparent in how prices are set, equitable in how revenue is appropriated to mitigate costs on the most vulnerable communities, and built to ensure our global competitiveness. I fully agree. Following on those food companies' heels, Microsoft announced that it, too, would begin advocating in Congress for Federal climate action. It joined the Climate Leadership Council--a group of economists, policymakers, businesses, and environmental groups--formed in 2017, to advance a price on carbon. Like the food companies, Microsoft sees a Federal price on carbon as the best policy to tackle climate change. Then, in May, 13 more companies announced the CEO Climate Dialogue to advocate for climate action. Once again, these companies declared that they supported a price on carbon: An economy-wide price on carbon is the best way to use the power of the market to achieve carbon reduction goals, in a simple, coherent and efficient manner. We desire to do this at the least cost to the economy and households. Markets will also spur innovation, and create and preserve quality jobs in a growing low-carbon economy. Note that last sentence: ``Markets will also spur innovation, and create and preserve quality jobs in a growing low-carbon economy.'' One of the weird things about all of the remorseless opposition to climate action out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers is that there is a heck of a lot of commerce and a heck of a lot of manufacturing in climate change solutions. So why are they so against them? It is an anomaly but not the only anomaly in climate denial. Republican colleagues who wax poetic about the free market seem not to notice this massive $650 billion subsidy for carbon pollution. That is a big thing not to notice if you are serious about the free market. The last gasp of climate obstruction here in Congress is to talk about innovation as the magic climate solution. Here is the rub: Without a clear market signal in the form of a price on carbon, there will be little incentive to innovate. How do you innovate away a $650 billion annual subsidy? How does the market work to reduce carbon pollution when carbon pollution is free? Innovations like carbon capture and storage aren't cheap. There is not much of a business case for these innovations--it is hard to see the revenue proposition--unless we put a price on carbon. Then innovation happens. Am I wrong about market theory? Let's go to Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning patron saint of market theory. He was unambiguous about pricing pollution. He was asked: Was there a case for the government to do something about pollution? He responded: Yes, there's a case for the government to do something. There's always a case for the government to do something about it . . . when what two people do affects a third party [ . . . ] But the question is, What's the best way to do it? And the best way to do it is not to have bureaucrats in Washington write rules and regulations. . . . The way to do it is to impose a tax on the cost of the pollutants . . . and make an incentive for . . . manufacturers and for consumers to keep down the amount of pollution. So, yes, putting a price on pollution to give an incentive to innovation is core free market principle. I happen to share that faith in the power of the market to drive innovation when the market is working. But it is not going to happen when the market is distorted by a $650 billion subsidy. That is why I filed a carbon pricing bill to help correct that fossil fuel subsidy and balance the market, so those principles can go to work. At the end of May, 75 companies came to Capitol Hill to advocate for carbon pricing. Together, those companies operate in all 50 States, have annual revenues over $2.5 trillion, and have a market value of nearly $2.5 trillion. These companies met with dozens of lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, to make the case for a price on carbon--that it is the commonsense policy to dramatically reduce carbon pollution, drive the transition to a low carbon economy, and grow jobs and the economy. There is enormous economic and scientific support for that argument. There is little opposition to that argument or at least little opposition that can't be traced back to the mischief of the fossil fuel industry and its front groups. I hope my colleagues listened. I also hope that other companies join in and help the American business community make climate action a Washington, DC, priority. It can't just be talk. The fossil fuel industry isn't going to just walk away from a $650 billion annual subsidy. To offset the millions spent by the fossil fuel bandits defending their license to pollute for free is going to require some real effort on the part of corporate America. It is also going to take corporate America getting control over the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. The watchdog group InfluenceMap has analyzed business associations around the world. They found that the Chamber and NAM--the National Association of Manufacturers--are the worst--the worst--the most obstructive when it comes to climate action. Here they are, rock bottom: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers--tail end of the worst. Why? Why are the Chamber and NAM the worst? If the majority of large companies in America support climate action, why do these two trade associations remain so opposed? Why are they the worst? I strongly recommend that if you are a corporate member of one of these two organizations--if you are a corporate member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, if you are a corporate member of the National Association of Manufacturers--that you demand an audit--that you demand an audit of these trade associations' funding because here is what I expect you will find: You will find that while they had you out on the front porch as a prop for the neighbors to see, they were in the back room, secretly pocketing big money from fossil fuel interests to stop climate legislation. My belief is that the fossil fuel industry has given both the Chamber and NAM so much money that those two organizations have chumped--chumped--their member organizations by ignoring their views on climate in order to keep the money pouring in secretly from the fossil fuel industry. The members are in a position to find out. Ask. Demand an audit. Find out if you have been chumped by the organizations you support. This trade association obstruction by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers has to change, but it will not until these trade associations' member companies demand a stop to the obstruction and demand real support for carbon pricing. Let me close with a word of warning. The alarms are ringing loudly. As one scientist recently said: ``The ocean is screaming.'' Financial crises loom. Our failure over the last three decades to address the climate crisis is a black mark against both our democracy and our system of free market capitalism. Creepy-crawly political subservience to fossil fuel interests has degraded American democracy, and free market capitalism is conspicuously failing to meet the climate challenge. That can change, but it has to change fast. More than three decades ago, Representative Claudine Schneider and Senator John Chafee, both Republicans from Rhode Island, introduced comprehensive legislation to address climate change--from Republicans, three decades ago. Since then, the fossil fuel industry's campaign to obstruct climate progress has succeeded, but at a terrible price. Every day that we fail to address our climate crisis is a day that we mortgage our children's and our grandchildren's futures. Through these long decades, the good guys in corporate America have been conspicuously absent. This recent activity makes me optimistic-- optimistic that the business community seems to be finally stepping up and optimistic that bipartisanship can be restored. Eyes are beginning to flutter open around here. Now it is time not just to wake up but to get to work. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, on Tuesday, the Washington Post published an important piece of investigative journalism. The journalists looked into a very narrow, very wealthy group of special interests seeking to control our Federal judiciary. It was a revealing story, one that matters a great deal to the Senate and to the people we serve. I come to the floor today to discuss that tightening special interest grip on our courts. The central operative in this court-fixing scheme is Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, the organization at the center of this effort. As I described here on the Senate floor several weeks ago, there are three incarnations of the Federalist Society. The first is a debating society for conservatives at law schools. They convene panels and forums for like-minded, aspiring lawyers to talk about conservative ideas and judicial doctrine. That is all fine. The second is a flashy Washington, DC, think tank. They attract big- name lawyers, scholars, and politicians--even Supreme Court Justices-- to their events. They publish and podcast. They hold black tie galas. I don't agree with the work they do, but I don't question their right to do it. The third Federalist Society is what was exposed in the Post article. It is something much, much darker, both in its funding and in its function. It is a vehicle for powerful interests seeking to ``reorder'' the judiciary under their control so as to benefit their corporate rightwing purposes. It seeks to accomplish by judicial power grab what the Republican Party has been unable to accomplish through the open Democratic process. This third, dark Federalist Society understands the fundamental power through the Federal judiciary to rig the system in favor of special interests. So what did the Post find out about how our judges on the most important courts in the country are selected? It found a network of front groups. It found shell entities with no employees. It found shared post office mail drops, common contractors and officers across nominally separate entities, even common presidents of nominally separate entities. In these characteristics, it has some resemblance to money laundering and crime syndicates. What else did they find? They found dark money funders, anonymous advertising, enormous pay packages for the operatives, and judicial lists prepared secretly. It found $250 million in dark money flowing through this apparatus. The story turns up familiar dark money political funders like the Mercers and the National Rifle Association, but it also exposes groups that are harder to spot, which may not have garnered much attention before but serve central functions in Leonard Leo's court-fixing apparatus. A few weeks ago I delivered remarks on the Senate floor about the sweeping influence of Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society court- fixing scheme. I touched on one Federalist Society product of this scheme in particular: the newly confirmed DC Court of Appeals judge, Neomi Rao. I described some pretty straightforward facts about Rao. Her connection to the Federalist Society is no secret. Sitting on the DC Circuit right now, her bio still appears on the Federalist Society website along with the list of 26 times she has been featured--26 times she has been featured at Federalist Society events. Before being nominated for one of the most influential courts in the country, which some call the second highest court in the land, she had never been a judge, she had never tried a case. Instead, she had served as the Trump administration's point person for helping big Republican donors tear down Federal safety regulations. She did this as the head of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, OIRA. That is not disputed. Before that, she founded something provocatively called the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School. Her center is a cog in Leonard Leo's machine. Let's revisit Rao's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the funding for the Center for the Study of the Administrative State. She testified that neither the Koch Foundation nor any anonymous donors had funded her center. Well, a trove of documents obtained by me, the New York Times, and others showed that was not true. A Virginia open records request had revealed that an anonymous donor funneling its dark money donation through Leonard Leo and the Charles Koch Foundation in fact donated $30 million intended to flow to her organization, her Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Well, my remarks drew quite a reaction. The center's current director took to Medium to post a 2,500-word rebuttal. He claimed I was all wrong about the center's funding--that none of its money came from those anonymous and Koch brothers' donations. The National Review jumped into the fray and noted the Medium post on its website. The nub of their criticism was that although I was right, the Scalia Law School had indeed received millions in anonymous and Koch brothers' money. That money had gone to fund scholarships, not to the anti-regulatory Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Let's start by assuming that is true. I will tell you, if I gave $30 million to my alma mater ``for scholarships,'' I would expect a thank- you. I expect they would see a gift of $30 million in scholarships as a benefit to the school. If they were asked ``Has Senator Whitehouse ever given you a gift?'' I would expect them to say ``Yes, he gave us a $30 million scholarship fund.'' I might even expect a nice press release. So I don't buy the ``this was just scholarships money'' dodge around telling the truth to the Judiciary Committee. But look a little more. In 2016, George Mason University, indeed, received a $10 million donation from the Charles Koch Foundation and, indeed, did receive a $20 million donation from an anonymous donor. Both gifts came with grant agreements, and these grant agreements were among the Virginia open records documents. So we can learn a little bit more. The grant agreements stipulate that the money was intended to fund ``scholarships'' but also specify that gifts were conditioned on the school's providing ``funding . . . and support for''--you guessed it-- Neomi Rao's Center for the Study of the Administrative State. That is not all we found. Private communications revealed with the grant agreements show that the Koch Foundation and their handpicked law school administrators viewed all of this money as fungible. I earlier said that if I gave $30 million, I might expect a press release. The Antonin Scalia Law School did a press release. Its announcement of this funding stated: ``The scholarship money will also benefit the institution because it frees up resources that can be allocated for other priorities, including additional faculty hires and support for academic programs.'' It didn't end there. The documents keep telling us more. They include a progress report--a progress report--to the Koch Foundation. Under the heading ``most pressing needs,'' Dean Henry Butler wrote to the Koch Foundation: ``Cash is King (scholarships are cash).'' In that same memo to the Koch Foundation--which, by the way, is kind of a bizarre document to exist in the first place, unless this is kind of a front for Koch brothers' political activities--Dean Butler also made clear that Rao's center had indeed received hundreds of thousands in funding from an anonymous donor, just as I charged, and further made clear that Rao's center was being funded with $400,000 from ``naming-gifts scholarship revenue''-- the Koch brothers' ``scholarships'' money that was earmarked for Neomi Rao's center. It was being rerouted to fund Leonard Leo and Neomi Rao's project to gut public protections in this country on behalf of those donors. The dark plot thickened. Here is the most interesting part of all. The open records documents also show that the law school dean, Henry Butler, regularly reported to Leonard Leo on developments at Neomi Rao's center, including faculty hiring and other Federalist Society priorities. The emails are very cozy. The dean is deferential. There is even a calendar entry for lunch at a Washington, DC, restaurant for Neomi Rao, Henry Butler, and Leonard Leo. Cozier still is that another condition of the Koch Foundation's massive gift was that Henry Butler be protected as dean because they viewed him--specifically him--as ``critical to advancing the school's mission.'' That mission? Doing the Koch Foundation and Leonard Leo's bidding to help cripple public interest protections in this country for big special interests funding Leo, funding the center, and funding the Federalist Society. Neomi Rao's defenders were quick to push back on this point and argued that my criticisms of her center's work was stifling their academic inquiry. They pointed to the center's research roundtables and public policy conferences as evidence of its fair and independent academic bona fides. Sorry, but it is tough to buy when, in one private fundraising email, Dean Butler was revealed to have asked one wealthy donor for a $1.5 million gift ``to entice Neomi [Rao] to return home to Scalia Law after she dismantles the administrative state.'' Tell me, who is the real threat to academic inquiry here? Perhaps more to the point, now that she is a judge: Who is a present threat to judicial independence on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals? Fancy lunches and weird, cozy relationships between public law school deans and DC power brokers can seem a bit in the weeds, so let's not lose sight of the bigger picture here. This stuff matters because Americans are now seeing their courts fill with judges, like Neomi Rao, who are expected and chosen to reliably rule for big corporate and Republican partisan special interests--the ones funding the Federalist Society's selection of these judges, the ones funding the Judicial Crisis Network's confirmation of these judges, the ones funding Amici, the front group Amici that shows up to argue in court. I recently looked at the numbers for the Federalist Society-dominated Supreme Court. Under Chief Justice Roberts' tenure, through the end of the October term of 2017 to 2018, Republican appointees delivered partisan 5-to-4 rulings that favored corporate or Republican partisan special interests, not three or four times, not even a dozen or two dozen times, but 73 times. If you look at the Court's cases during Chief Justice Roberts' tenure and look at the 5-to-4 decisions and look at the 5-to-4 decisions wherein the breakdown between the five and the four was partisan and look at those 5-to-4 partisan decisions, for the ones in which there was a clearly apparent, big Republican donor interest, you will find that every single one of those 73 decisions was won--was decided--in favor of the big Republican donor interest. There were 73 victories delivered for big Republican interests with there being no Democratic appointee who joined the majority. Here is one case study--a recent decision after the 73. It is Lamps Plus v. Varela. The plaintiff, Frank Varela, sued his employer, Lamps Plus, after a company data breach led to a fraudulent tax return being filed in his name. An appellate court looked at the case and relied on a State contract principle to agree with plaintiff Varela. That is a traditionally conservative principle--deferring to State laws. Along came the Supreme Court in this case, and it ditched the conservative principle to rule in favor of the corporation in a 5-to-4 partisan decision. There is another case study pending before the Court now--Kisor v. Wilkie. On its face, Kisor addresses an obscure administrative law doctrine about judicial deference to Federal Agencies, but Kisor has been described as a ``stalking horse for much larger game.'' The larger purpose is to strip away judicial deference to administrative Agencies' capacity to regulate independently in the public's interest. You have to understand that if you are a mighty corporation, you come to an administrative Agency from a position of terrific advantage ordinarily, and where administrative Agencies are willing to stand up, that is important, but if you can get your judges on a court and strip away that deference, now you can put the fix in through the courts. Imagine a world in which Federal Agencies get virtually no judicial deference and in which Leonard Leo's special interest, handpicked judges rule on Americans' disputes with big corporations. If these big special interests are sick of protections for workers in the workplace, let the judges get rid of them. Dismantle the administrative state. If a big special interest is sick of safeguards for our air and water or dangers in toys our children play with, dismantle the administrative state. Tear down the safety regulations. They will have the judges to do that. If corporations are sick of a guardrail that keeps our financial system from dragging down millions of Americans' financial security, these judges stand ready to dismantle the administrative state that protects investors. Leonard Leo's dark Federalist Society element is installing judges who are poised to systematically and relentlessly dismantle government Agencies that are sworn to keep us safe and secure. How do you push back on this machine wherein the big-money special interests select a nominee by contributing to the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo's secretive judicial lists and judge-picking process? They spend money campaigning for their selected judge's confirmation through the Judicial Crisis Network. They then spend money through amicus briefs and argue before the judges on whom they have spent money to select and confirm. Sure enough--bingo--it is 73 to 0 in the important decisions in which they can get the Republican appointees to gang up in a group of five and deliver and deliver for the interests of the center of this, which you can't properly identify because it is not transparent. The Federalist Society doesn't disclose its donors. The Judicial Crisis Network doesn't disclose its donors. The Supreme Court rule doesn't get at who the real donors are to this phony front group, Amici. You find out later on who the winners are--73 to nothing. How do you push back on that machine? You push back with sunlight, with transparency. We must have transparency in our campaign finance system. We must have transparency in this special interest conveyor belt that is filling our courts. We should also have transparency in the courts. Right now, the dark money-funded front groups behind Leonard Leo and behind the Federalist Society's judge-picking operation are probably also behind those amicus briefs. With a little transparency, we would know. It is through these amicus briefs that the judges who were selected and confirmed by these folks get instructed on how they should rule. This is a recipe for corruption. The Court itself should require real transparency from so-called friends of the Court. These amicus groups come in under a Supreme Court rule. The Supreme Court rule only requires them to disclose who paid for the brief. Yet who is really behind the group? We don't know. The Supreme Court could correct that. It could correct it like that, but then it would start to expose who is here. If the Court will not, Congress must. Democracy dies in darkness, it has been said, and so does judicial independence. The American people deserve to know when powerful special interests are paying to sway Federal judges with self-serving legal advice. If those same interests paid to get those judges selected and paid to campaign for their confirmations and then paid to have the amicus briefs put before the Court, the need for the American people to understand what is going on becomes even more profound. I close with a big thank-you to the Washington Post for its reporting. Thanks to its careful investigative work of its pouring through tax records and interviews, we now know a lot more about the Federalist Society's court-fixing operation. Our President likes to describe investigative journalism that pokes and probes at the mischief of his administration as fake news. There is nothing fake about this news. This is in the best traditions of investigative journalism, and I am grateful for its work to illustrate how our courts are being captured by corporations and runaway partisanship that is fueled by dark money. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, it is an honor and a true pleasure to join Rhode Island's senior Senator here on the floor today to honor the work of Salve Regina University's seventh president, Sister Jane Gerety. Like Senator Reed, I have enjoyed Sister Jane's friendship, companionship, wise counsel, encouragement, and occasional course- correction suggestions over many years. She will retire next month, capping a decade of service to her university, to the Newport community, and to Rhode Island. Sister Jane has accomplished remarkable things in her tenure. She established a new satellite campus in Warwick to help working Rhode Islanders take graduate and continuing education courses. She helped establish online study options, bringing the university's many offerings directly to Rhode Island students in their homes. She launched new programs of study, including a master of fine arts and creative writing, experiential learning opportunities in a range of fields, and a doctoral program in nursing. She raised millions of dollars in funding to strengthen Salve's endowments, supporting every facet of university life. She supervised numerous improvements to Salve Regina's beautiful Newport campus, including a $46 million renovation of the O'Hare Academic Building. Sister Jane's work has contributed much to the city of Newport and the State of Rhode Island. Newport is home to an array of legendary Gilded Age mansions and other culturally significant buildings set atop cliffs overlooking the shining Atlantic Ocean. Many of these architectural masterpieces now belong to her university and have needed significant upkeep. From the outset, Sister Jane recognized the value of Salve's stewardship of the architectural heritage of Newport, RI. The beautifully maintained campus, replete with the newly dedicated Gerety Hall, named in honor of Sister Jane, is a gem of an asset for the city and for the State. Sister Jane's work has extended beyond our State's border. Under her management, Salve strengthened its Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. Today more than ever, the Pell Center is a fitting reflection of its namesake, Senator Claiborne Pell, for whom our democratic ideals held limitless power. The center's academic programs, publications, and forums spread important ideas around the globe, advancing American domestic and foreign policy, cyber security, and diversity in leadership. As impressive and praiseworthy as those professional accomplishments is the immediate personal and lasting difference Sister Jane has made in the individual lives of so many around her, including Senator Reed and myself. A member of the 2019 Salve class says he will remember Sister Jane en route to ``bring candy and snacks to student athletes for conference games'' and her willingness to meet with any student in her office. Indeed, when visiting Newport, young alums in search of graduate school advice or a word of encouragement have known that they are welcome to stop by Sister Jane's office to find an open door, a warm heart, and wise counsel. Over the course of her career, Sister Jane embodied the values of her Catholic order, the Sisters of Mercy. The Sisters were founded with a mission to spread the gift of education and care for those in need in their community. Last year, Sister Jane told Newport Daily News she sees the institution she led as ``imbued with mercy,'' adding, ``I hope I've helped to cultivate that spirit.'' I should note that with regard to the legacy of the Sisters of Mercy, in her service, Sister Jane also honored an extraordinary tradition of extraordinary female leadership. As I am giving these remarks, I am so glad that the Presiding Officer in the U.S. Senate is a woman Senator. Sister Therese, who was Sister Jane's predecessor, was a skilled and beloved leader of Salve Regina, and Sister Lucille--before Sister Therese and before Sister Jane--was another powerful and effective leader. This impressive tradition of leadership by women is worth celebrating on its own as we celebrate the achievements of Sister Jane, and Sister Jane has shown herself well worthy and advanced that tradition. Sister Jane, it is clear to all who know you--and that is pretty much all who love you--that the spirit of mercy has flourished at Salve Regina and has been enhanced in our State under your leadership. We wish you well in your next chapters. I join my senior Senator in these sentiments.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here today for the 243rd time to call on this Chamber to wake up to the reality of climate change. I thank my colleague Senator Cornyn for his recent statement acknowledging that the days of ignoring this are over. Now it is time to do something with keeping global warming below the 1.5 or 2 degrees Centigrade threshold target. I speak regularly about the fossil fuel industry's relentless grip on Congress and how that grip prevents action on climate. Don't get me wrong--they are still at it, but they are not the only thing slowing progress. Another impediment is the wide swathes of our news media that cover the issue torpidly or not at all or as actual propagators of falsehood. Look at the big climate stories the media ought to be covering just from 2018. The year 2018 brought two landmark climate science reports. One was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on what warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels will do. The other was the Trump administration's own National Climate Assessment. These two studies delivered the starkest warnings on climate change ever--that the damage from climate change is already occurring, that world economies are now at risk, and that we are almost out of time to prevent the worst consequences. Even the fossil fuel industry and its stooges in the Trump administration didn't contest the science behind these reports. They know their science-denial campaign is phony. They know the real science is irrefutable. So it is better to hide from it than fight it, I guess. The year 2018 also brought devastating natural disasters linked to climate change. Out West, wildfires in California broke records. Hurricanes supercharged by warming oceans slammed the east coast, gulf coast, and Caribbean. Floods, droughts, and rising seas were reported across the United States and around the globe. Mr. President, 2018 also brought dire warnings of economic dangers from climate change. At the U.N. climate summit in December, a group of 415 global investors--not environmentalists; investors--managing $32 trillion of investments warned that unless carbon emissions are urgently cut, the world faces a financial crash worse than the 2008 economic meltdown. The group called for the end of fossil fuel subsidies and the introduction of substantial prices on carbon to rebalance the market failure. The Union of Concerned Scientists separately found that over 300,000 coastal homes, with a collective market value of over $130 billion, are at risk of chronic flooding by 2045. UCS showed that by the end of the century, 2.4 million homes, worth more than $1 trillion, could be at risk. Decisions we make now will determine whether those risks come to pass. By the way, First Street Foundation found that coastal property values are already beginning to slide. Unprecedented catastrophes, forceful warnings from scientists and financial experts--surely the viewers of America's top television networks should be focused on these things--or not. According to the media watchdog Media Matters, our major television networks--ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX--aired 45 percent less climate change coverage on their marquee news programs in 2018 than in 2017. Climate coverage on network nightly news and Sunday morning political shows fell to just 142 minutes in all of 2018, down from an already lame 260 minutes in 2017. That is less than 1 minute a day of coverage from all four major networks combined. Kudos to NBC, which actually upped its coverage by about one-quarter from the year before. Without NBC, the numbers look even worse. Media Matters found CBS's climate coverage down 56 percent from 2017 to 2018. ``FOX News Sunday'' is down 75 percent, and ABC is down a whopping 81 percent from a pretty low performance to begin with. I have noticed this trend, so I have begun keeping an eye on the Sunday shows' coverage this year. Each month, I look at how many substantive segments on climate change each show runs. It is not good. In April, for instance, there were only two substantive segments on climate change across all five shows. They have basically become Sunday morning political gossip columns. If you move from quantity to quality, well, with TV still the top way Americans get their news, the quality of news coverage really matters. How are television news shows doing in that department? Too often, also badly. Many of these shows still give airtime to clownish climate deniers just to create a pro and con. The Weather Channel tracked reaction on television shows to the Trump administration's National Climate Assessment this past fall and found airtime still given to debunked climate nonsense--for instance, the American Enterprise Institute's Danielle Pletka's ridiculous falsehoods about recent cold weather; conservative political commentators Rick Santorum and Stephen Moore's argument that climate scientists cooked up the assessment to enrich themselves; and a Member of Congress's argument that ``our climate always changes, and we see those ebb and flows through time,'' as if million-year climate changes are in any way comparable to the rapid punch in the face we are giving to our climate with carbon emissions right now, manmade. Allowing this falsehood on the air tilts Americans' perception of climate change. ``Placing a climate contrarian behind a scientist is effectively shrinking the 97 percent consensus on the issue to 50 percent--two people arguing opposite sides,'' the Weather Channel pointed out. In the Columbia Journalism Review last month, author and journalist Mark Hertsgaard and editor and publisher Kyle Pope describe this troubling trend as follows: Climate deniers are still given respectful treatment by US news outlets across the ideological spectrum. [They] in fact deserve to have their social licenses revoked, just as tobacco companies did. More than anyone else, it is climate deniers who got us into this mess; they don't get to decide what we do with it now. Again, on this front, NBC has been the best. In December, NBC's ``Meet the Press'' devoted an entire show to climate coverage, delving into the science and discussing climate solutions in detail. It began with a clear message from host Chuck Todd. He said: We're not going to debate climate change, the existence of it. The Earth is getting hotter. And human activity is a major cause, period. We're not going to give time to climate deniers. The science is settled, even if political opinion is not. That is the right place to start the discussion in the media on climate change. Facts are facts. Falsehood is falsehood and does not deserve equal time. I hope other networks take note. If they want to cover climate denial, cover it the way it should be covered: investigatively, as a fraudulent enterprise with big secret money behind it. Trust me, there is a lot to investigate. Don't legitimize lies. Newspapers and online news are a mixed bag. As a group, our top national papers are improving their coverage of climate change. According to the University of Colorado Boulder's International Collective on Environment, Culture, & Politics, the five major national newspapers--the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times--published 282 articles about climate change in January 2009. A decade later, January of this year, those papers published 469--282, up to 469. That is a good sign. So, too, generally is the quality of coverage. Big publications like the New York Times and Washington Post and smaller, independent, and web-based publications like InsideClimate News, Years of Living Dangerously, and Grist have brought us into the midst of climate crisis with brilliant reporting and storytelling. The Guardian, from overseas, may be the best of all. The Guardian just decided, as editorial policy, to use ``climate emergency crisis or breakdown'' instead of ``climate change,'' ``global heating'' instead of ``global warming,'' and ``climate science denier'' instead of ``climate skeptic.'' These outlets all offer readers captivating photos, videos, and graphics that illustrate exactly how the climate is changing and what that will mean. In Rhode Island, our Providence Journal has done exceptional reporting on carbon pollution's effects on our climate and oceans. This year alone, the Journal has published indepth, front-page articles on how Rhode Island's real estate market is already experiencing the effects of climate change, on scientists' warnings of massive flooding risk to coastal towns, and on the risks facing Providence's hurricane barrier as sea levels rise and storm surges loom in the decades to come. Here is an example of that, like that from our home State paper. Mr. President, other Rhode Island papers, like the Newport Daily News, the Westerly Sun, and ecoRI, cover climate change in their communities with vigor and skill. They supply the news Rhode Islanders need to understand and prepare for the effects of climate change. Elsewhere, the record is not so good. Take USA Today, a paper with a circulation to 1.8 million Americans and a broad online readership. According to the University of Colorado, the paper ran 25 articles on climate change in January 2009. It ran only 14 this January. On its editorial page, however, USA Today's editorial board wrote one of the strongest climate editorials so far this year, making the case for meaningful action on climate change. They cited real science and dismissed Republican leaders' cynical campaign against the Green New Deal. The editorial concluded: ``The critics owe this and future generations more than scorn; they have an obligation to put better ideas and solutions on the table. Bravo and well said to that. The reverse is the Wall Street Journal, with pretty good news coverage. It is a respectable news-gathering newspaper--in fact, a first-order one. But its opinion page emits toxic climate waste. For decades, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page has been a haven for outlandish science denial, but they truly outdo themselves when it comes to climate denial. Take a piece that the Journal published just last year titled, ``The Sea Is Rising, but Not Because of Climate Change.'' Riddled with scientific errors, it ignores all of the legitimate science on climate change. The author whom they published, a notorious climate denier, has for years been affiliated with or funded by the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute--a rogues' gallery of industry-funded climate denial front groups. The sum of this is an American media too often asleep at the switch when warnings need to be made. The Washington Post media columnist and former public editor of the New York Times, Margaret Sullivan, wrote this past fall: Just as the world, especially the United States, needs radical change to mitigate the coming crisis, so too for the news media. . . . This subject must be kept front and center, with the pressure on and the stakes made abundantly clear at every turn. . . . Just as the smartest minds in earth science have issued their warning, the best minds in media should be giving sustained attention to how to tell this most important story in a way that will create change. There is some exceptional climate change coverage reaching readers today. Indeed, American voters increasingly name climate change as a big priority for them at the ballot box, but the pace of climate disruption demands urgency. Columbia Journalism Review's Hertsgaard and Pope write: ``If American journalism doesn't get the climate story right--and soon--no other story will matter.'' I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, let me first thank my friend Senator Schatz, of Hawaii, for joining me on the floor today to talk about the financial hazards that are associated with ignoring climate change. He has been a really terrific leader on this subject. I have to say that I am sometimes a little bit embarrassed that Rhode Island is the Ocean State when Hawaii has so much ocean out there in the Pacific. I guess that is what you get for getting there first, but I am delighted that Senator Schatz is here. What I want to do in my time here, in my following up on Senator Schatz' remarks, is to go through some of the recent warnings that have come out. One I will go back to from last year, and the other ones I will follow up on quickly. They are all between March 25 of this year and now, just in the last couple of months. The one from last year is a Wall Street Journal article that documented the increasing climate risk and the insurance industry's need to recalculate. It had the legendary investor--the ``Wizard of Omaha''--Warren Buffett warning that if reinsurance contracts--and he is a reinsurance guy--covered 30 years, he would be crazy not to include climate risks. Those were his words. The article goes on to point out that climate change may be gradual but that its effects are volatile. It is like something steady for a long time and then, in the words of the article, a sudden large, unexpected hit. ``You can have an increased potential for an outsized loss in a single year,'' and they conclude ``there's a cost for inaction.'' What we are doing here, which is nothing on climate change, has a very significant cost. The article points out that after Hurricane Andrew hit Florida, 13 insurance companies were ordered liquidated because they were not adequately well prepared. The risks are going up precipitously. The probability of a Texas storm dropping about 20 inches of rain was about 1 percent a year until 2000, and it is expected to increase to 18 percent a year--an 18-times increase in the risk of that level of storm and flooding. Swiss Re says in the article that coastal flooding could leave certain coastal areas ``so exposed, insurance becomes no longer viable. It becomes uninsurable.'' Indeed, in this article, it points out that if you take climate change into account, flood losses could exceed $1 trillion per year by 2050. In saying this, it aligns with Moody's, the famous bond evaluator and insurer, which is going to start evaluating municipal bonds for coastal communities based on their preparation for coastal risk. This is not some green organization. When it is starting to evaluate, something is going on. Freddie Mac has warned of a coastal property values crash that could be as serious as the 2008 mortgage meltdown. Again, Freddie Mac is not a green or environmental group. It is warning about a coming risk. We will not listen to those risks because too many people here are told what to do and what to think by the fossil fuel industry. Just recently, on March 25, 2019, a Federal Reserve research paper warned that climate risk could cause a financial crisis: Losses from natural disasters magnified by higher temperatures and elevated sea levels could spark a financial crisis. The article identified the three key forces that are transforming the economy in our time, and one of those three is climate change. This is not some side-bar issue. It quoted the latest National Climate Assessment. ``Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century.'' The reason, it describes, is due to a fundamental market failure. ``Carbon fuel prices do not properly account for climate change costs.'' Of course, the fossil fuel industry loves that market failure, but we should not tolerate it if we purport to believe in a market economy. Senator Schatz and I support a carbon fee. They call it a carbon tax, pointing out that it can appropriately incentivize innovations, which we need, and that it should equal the social cost of carbon, which our bill does. It also points out that we are creating a risk for generations to come. We might get off pretty free in terms of the punch that comes back, but our kids and our grandkids are not going to think that we did a very responsible job here. What are the increasing financial risks the article mentions? They are business interruptions in bankruptcies, unexpected losses in the value of assets or companies, and climate-based credit risk exposure, particularly in my coastal State, which is concerned about loans to affected businesses or mortgages on coastal real estate--again, lining up with what Freddie Mac and others have said about the dangers of a coastal property value crash. The next article of April 4, BlackRock, which is the world's largest asset manager, warns that investors are underpricing the impact of climate-related risks. The report points out that all major U.S. metropolitan areas were already suffering mild to moderate losses to GDP as a result of climate change--already suffering that--and that the risk of a property being hit by a category 5 hurricane was expected to rise by 275 percent if no climate action were taken. This is a map from that article of the economic impacts of climate change. All of the reds are in real trouble; the tans are in trouble; yellows are in some trouble; trouble for the light green, and green is very scarce and is seeing a little bit of GDP improvement. Yet, if you look at the map, that is a country that is hurting economically as a result of climate change. OK. Four days later, on April 8, EPA scientists published an article that climate change will cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Unchecked, climate change will cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would prevent a lot of the damage and reduce the annual economic toll in some sectors by more than half. Unmitigated warming could reduce the global GDP by as much as 20 percent, said a related report by the British Government. Now, think about that. You are going to take a 20-percent hit to the global GDP. What does that do? That is an economic downturn of a very dark order. It also points out that the cost of inaction is really high and that the cost of reducing emissions pales in comparison. We are taking the more dangerous and expensive path because the group that gets hurt has control over this body, the fossil fuel industry. Yet, as other warnings will point out, it can't change the inevitable. All it can do is postpone it, and the inevitable then gets worse. It warns that damage to coastal property, primarily on the gulf and east coast, will reach $120 billion per year. If you are from a noncoastal State, you may think that is funny. I am from a coastal State, and I don't think that is funny at all. I think my colleagues should take a warning like that seriously. The benefits that the country stands to reap by cutting greenhouse gas emissions was another theme. There is an upside here. We win economically by cutting greenhouse gas emissions. If we don't, the cost is hundreds of billions of dollars. Next, on the same day of April 8, 2019, a CNBC article, in summarizing an Urban Land Institute report, warns that for real estate investors in particular, risk is rising exponentially in the age of climate change to the point at which a new cottage industry of companies has emerged that assess climate risk to real estate. ``Climate change,'' the article reads, ``is likely to have a bigger impact on valuation in the future as asset and market liquidity are affected.'' Asset and market liquidity mean that the market seizes up, that you can't sell your house. Of course, that matches Freddie Mac's prediction because, if the person you are trying to sell your house to can't get a mortgage because the bank thinks, at the end of 30 years, the property is going to be literally underwater or that the bank will not be able to get insurance for its mortgage, suddenly, you have a real problem in selling that house. Now you are only selling to cash buyers, and that is a dramatic shift in the price you can get. That is why Freddie Mac is talking about the coastal property value crash. The following day, on April 9, the investment advisory firm Mercer comes out with another report that describes this warning is the latest from the financial sector of the physical and financial risks posed by rising temperatures. Some investment strategists warn of physical and social damage cascading across the economy. Again, these are not environmentalists. This is an investment advisory firm. It is warning us of financial perils ahead if we don't start paying attention. A part of it is the loss in value or simply the outright loss of wide swaths of coastal property. So, when I come back to rely on mine as a coastal State, I hope my colleagues here can appreciate that this isn't funny when you are talking about the loss of value or simply about the outright loss of wide swaths of coastal property. The scenarios aren't good. They are negative for global growth, and they aren't really great for anyone. It is a declining global economy that has no big winners spiking up, and it can move fast. Asset prices, they say, could quickly shift to reflect the risk. There could be material impacts, especially at the sector level, in a relatively short period of time. That is how crashes work. They creep up on you, and then they crash. That is why they call them crashes. Next, on April 18, 2019--9 days later--we have the central banks. Thirty central banks around the world called for a better assessment of the risks from higher global temperatures. As Senator Schatz pointed out, the U.S. Fed and the Central Bank of Brazil were among the institutions not involved in the initiative. It is pathetic on our part. Climate change is identified as a source of financial risk that these financial regulators feel is well within their mandate to begin to address. They considered that the report issued a loud wake-up call for the global economy to act on climate change. Good luck getting through the muscling of the fossil fuel industry around this particular building, but the wake-up call is ringing in the financial community. Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England--who was warned about this previously--and Villeroy de Galhau, the Governor of the Bank of France, warned that climate change and the poor management of the transition to a low-carbon economy have the potential to trigger a ``sudden collapse in asset prices that could devastate the global financial systems.'' ``If some companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world,'' they argue, ``they will fail to exist.'' Again, as others have said, the article argues that the costs of decarbonization are likely to be small compared to the costs of not taking action. Yet again, we are listening to the fossil fuel industry here. It has a huge stake in all of this. It has a huge conflict of interest. It has control over a significant part of Congress, and it is blocking us from taking the essential safe, low-cost path. The last one is from April 17, the Network for Greening the Financial System, which is the comprehensive report by a group of central banks. Again, it points out that these climate-related risks are a source of financial risk. Indeed, the head of the Bank of England--the regulator for insurance and banking in the UK--has described this as a systemic risk. What is a systemic risk? That means that when the entity collapses, like when the carbon asset bubble collapses, it doesn't just take the carbon asset bubble companies down with it; the rest of the economy pours in behind, and you have a systemic economic meltdown. Just like happened in 2003, it wasn't just the banks with the junk mortgages that failed; a whole bunch of others businesses got sucked into that vortex, and the same is predicted here. They point out a couple of final things about the nature of this financial risk: One, it is far-reaching in its breadth and magnitude. That is an ominous description of a financial risk. It is potentially aggravated by tipping points in a nonlinear fashion; i.e., it gets to a certain point and then crashes. We New Englanders appreciate this when we have the snow melt in the springtime. The snow piles up on the roof of your house. It piles up storm by storm and snowflake by snowflake. But one warm spring day, you suddenly hear ``woomph'' outside because the whole snowpack on your roof has slid off. It is a catastrophic failure of snow adhesion in that case. In this case, it is an example of how quickly a nonlinear tipping point can lead into economic distress. Two, it is foreseeable. We know it is coming. There is a high degree of certainty that these risks will materialize. We know perfectly well this is coming; we just won't do anything about it because the people who have to deal with it first--the fossil fuel industry--have this place tied in knots. Three, irreversibility. When it happens, there is no going back. There is currently no mature technology to reverse the process of overheating our climate and acidifying our ocean. For our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren, that leaves a pretty bleak prospect that we have just discounted away as if they weren't going to be born, as if they didn't exist now, as if this weren't going to happen, as if we shouldn't care. Irreversibility. Here is the last one: dependency on short-term actions. The magnitude and the nature of these irreversible, foreseeable, far-reaching, future impacts will be determined by actions taken today. It will be determined by actions taken today. If we don't make the right decisions now, our mistakes, our indolence, our ignorance, our greed, our subservience to this industry--whatever it is--will cascade through the decades irreversibly with far-reaching impact. They will look back at us and say: It was foreseeable. Didn't you guys know this was foreseeable? You were told. You were warned. How could you have done nothing? I don't have a very good answer. It is time to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, pick up the paper these days, and it is hard to miss the headlines about corporate America getting serious about reducing carbon emissions. Companies are purchasing renewable power. They are moving into carbon-neutral office buildings. They are purchasing electric vehicle fleets. They are developing new technologies and products for the transition to a carbon economy. Many are forcing some degree of sustainability out of their supply chains. All of this is important work and the companies that are leading in these areas deserve real applause. But--you knew there was going to be a ``but,'' and here it is-- corporations alone reducing their own carbon emissions or designing new low-carbon technologies will not win the fight against climate change. If you want to fail on climate change while looking good, that will work, but if you actually want to win--if you want to keep us between 1.5 and 2 degrees in temperature increase--you will fail. A new report, ``The Blind Spot,'' from the Environmental Defense Fund, makes crystal clear that individual corporate efforts to reduce their own carbon emissions will not be enough. Here is what it says: ``While voluntary actions by companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are important, only public policy can deliver the pace and scale of reductions necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.'' ``Public policy''--that is us. That is Congress. EDF is not alone. Report after report has shown that we will fail without government action. But as engaged as so much of corporate America is in greening its own operations, they are almost totally absent from the halls of Congress when it comes to climate change-- AWOL, no place. So government sits, stalled by the fossil fuel industry, and does nothing serious. As a Senator, I am an inhabitant of this political ecosystem. I observe how this works. Consider this the field report of the biologist who lives in the jungle. The sad reality of our political ecosystem is that post-Citizens United, the power of big industries seeking influence in Congress has exploded. Where previously, big special interests had muskets, Citizens United gave them artillery. On climate change, one industry, the fossil fuel industry, is deploying its artillery of big money and big threats here in Washington like nobody else. It is no surprise. They are defending a $700 billion per year fossil fuel subsidy just in the United States, according to the International Monetary Fund. They have a huge interest--a multihundred billion dollar interest--in preventing legislation that would reduce consumption of their fossil fuels. So they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and elections. They fund dozens of phony front groups and trade associations to engage in all sorts of climate denial and obstruction. They hide their influence in dark-money channels. They pollute the public sphere as badly as they pollute the atmosphere. In our political ecosystem, they are a big and dangerous predator. Ask former Congressman Bob Inglis. Ask former Senate candidate Katie McGinty. The fossil fuel industry is a multitentacled, well- camouflaged, and deadly political beast. And, then, there is the rest of the business community: retail, food and beverage, financial services, tech, consumer goods, and manufacturing. Most are taking steps to reduce their own emissions, but when it comes to doing something about climate change here in Congress, they just don't show up, and the result is entirely predictable. In an institution like Congress, whose currencies are money and influence, if one industry spends on lobbies like a beast and there is no counterweight, that industry likely carries the day. That is simple political hydraulics. It is true in sports, and it is true in battles: If one side doesn't show up, the other side owns the field. And so the fossil fuel industry owns the Republican Party. That is why it is imperative that the rest of corporate America start showing up on climate. Many of them are here. They do lobby. They just care about other things, and their silence about climate change is deafening. The good guys are just not on the field. They are scared of retaliation. They have other priorities. They don't want to be yelled at by the Chamber of Commerce. They are getting what they want and don't want to upset the applecart. There are lots of reasons, but it doesn't change the outcome. It is not just the EDF report. I got today the New America report ``Prospects for Climate Change Policy Reform.'' They point out that in the past, business and government usually worked together to solve environmental problems. I quote them here: ``A cross-partisan model of environmental-business engagement held sway for decades on other issues; however, companies have been less willing to provide leadership on climate policy.'' No kidding. But the fossil fuel industry is here, and it exerts a relentless barrage of lobbying, electioneering, and propaganda pressure on Congress. And it owns the field. This statement from the EDF report is really its central message: ``The most powerful tool companies have to fight climate change is their political influence.'' So when they don't show up, it makes a difference. This is the message that corporate America needs to take to heart. Republicans are not going to break this artificial, fossil-fuel-funded, climate logjam here in Congress until corporate America--the corporate America they listen to--starts to demand climate action, not on a website, not in their purchasing standards but here in Congress. In this political ecosystem, the inhabitants know when something is real, and they know when it is corporate greenwashing, or well- intentioned peripheral stuff they can ignore. Members know who is serious. The fossil fuel industry is deadly serious. The EDF report says that any evaluation of corporate climate policy must include an analysis of its lobbying and political spending as it relates to climate. EDF is right. Corporate America needs to be accountable for the results that it pays for, and that includes whether or not companies fund anti- climate trade associations. This is another dirty Washington secret. Many companies subcontract lobbying and electioneering activity to trade associations. Two of the biggest trade associations--the National Association of Manufacturers and the very biggest, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the proverbial 800- pound gorilla--have spent decades denying that climate change was even occurring and obstructing any effort to reduce carbon pollution-- decades of denial and obstruction. Too many companies with good climate policies support them with the result that those companies' functional climate presence in Washington is opposite to what they say their policy is and opposite to what they say on their website. The group InfluenceMap looks at corporate lobbying and ranks corporations and trade associations by their influence on climate policy. Of the 50 most influential trade associations around the world, InfluenceMap shows the Chamber and the National Association of Manufacturers to be the two worst--the two most opposed when it comes to reducing carbon pollution. Here they are, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, right at the bottom--the very worst. Look at those companies that are greening their own operations but are supporting the Chamber and the National Association of Manufacturers. Look at the companies that don't show up in Congress to lobby for climate action and, instead, lobby through these two who lobby against the climate action those companies claim to support. Those companies' net lobbying presence in Congress is against climate action, whatever they may claim to support. Their net lobbying presence in Congress is against climate action--directly opposed to the policies they claim to support. There is an accountability moment that needs to come for those companies, unless they honestly believe that climate change is a hoax, that it is not real, we don't need to worry about it, and obstruction is OK. If that is their position, they are getting proper representation from the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but if they are telling the world--and their shareholders and their customers--that they take climate change seriously, they have a little explaining to do about supporting these two enemies of climate progress, particularly, if they are not showing up in Congress to counter the denial and obstruction they are paying for. For years, companies that go out and brag to consumers and investors about how green they are simultaneously fund climate denial and obstruction via those two trade associations. That has to stop. In fact, more and more consumers and investors are beginning to call on companies to stop this corporate doublespeak. You can't have a good climate website and fund these two organizations and face your shareholders and say you are serious. Consumers who buy a Coke or a Pepsi don't want to be supporting the Chamber's decades-long campaign against climate action. Investors in Coca-Cola and Pepsico don't want these companies to put their reputations at risk by funding anti-climate groups. Investors don't want these companies to ignore climate change when climate change may upend their water-dependent businesses. Coca-Cola features a powerful statement about its commitment to climate action on its website. ``Climate change is a profound challenge,'' it says, ``and we are partnering with other businesses, civil society organizations, and governments to support cooperative action on this critical issue. . . . We also recognize climate change may have long-term direct and indirect implications for our business and supply chain.'' In 2018, Coca-Cola disclosed that it gave the chamber at least $85,000--probably a good deal more. PepsiCo is even more explicit about the need for climate action. I quote them: Implementing solutions to address climate change is important to the future of our company, customers, consumers and our shared world. . . . We believe industry and governments should commit to science-based action to keep global temperature increases to 2 Celsius above pre- industrial levels.'' In 2018, PepsiCo disclosed that it gave the chamber at least half a million dollars. Coke and Pepsi's own trade association, the American Beverage Association, also gives money to the chamber. So here are these two consumer-facing, climate-supporting companies, and both of them contribute directly to the Chamber of Commerce, and they run money through their own trade association, the American Beverage Association, into the Chamber of Commerce. And there it lies as the worst of the pair of lobbying organizations blocking climate action. What is the net effect of all of that? The net effect is that, for all their good work reducing their own carbon emissions and reducing their supply chain's carbon emissions, here in Congress, Coke and Pepsi are net opposed to climate action. Thankfully, some companies are beginning to realize that they can't just sit on the sidelines here in Washington and let the fossil fuel industry own Congress. Little Patagonia, the outdoor clothing manufacturer, has led the way. Bravo, Patagonia. Danone, Mars, Nestle, and Unilever have announced a sustainable food policy alliance to pursue a price on carbon in Congress. Separately, Microsoft recently announced that it was going to lobby Congress for a price on carbon. But the fact that those companies are the exceptions I can name shows how bad the presence of corporate America is on this issue here in Congress. I will give Microsoft some extra credit. Microsoft also stood up in Washington State to support a ballot initiative to put a price on carbon emissions. Starbucks, Amazon, Costco, and Boeing--big, supposedly green corporations in Washington State--stood by and let themselves get rolled by Big Oil, led by BP--``Beyond Petroleum,'' ha-- when Big Oil spent $30 million to defeat the measure. By the way, it is the oil CEOs who have been saying: Oh, we know our product causes climate change. We are serious about doing something about it, and what we are going to do to be serious about it is to support a price on carbon. That is what they say. What do they do? Look at BP. Look at the oil spending in Washington. They go right in and spend their money to fight the very policy they say they support. I know of no path to success on climate that does not include pricing carbon. It is also the right thing to do because failing to price carbon is bad economics. It is a market failure. So if you are a true free market person, you ought to get behind a price on carbon. If you are just a fossil fuel person, then OK, but admit it. There really is no path to success on climate change that does not include pricing carbon. That may be an unpleasant fact for some, but it is a fact. Staying between 1.5 and 2 degrees Centigrade world temperature increase is another fact. We can't miss that target, but we will. We will miss that target if this corporate doublespeak doesn't change. Work like this new report from EDF, and InfluenceMap's analysis of how these trade associations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers obstruct climate action, may help convince corporate America that it is time to step up, get on the field, and demand that Congress take real action to limit carbon pollution. Corporate America needs to go to its trade associations and say: Knock it off. No more U.S. chamber of carbon. No more national association of manufactured facts. Corporate America is paying for this nonsense, and corporate America can stop it. The two-faced game of having a good climate website but having your presence in Congress be against climate action has got to stop. Corporate America--the political force Republicans listen to--has the responsibility and the power to break the fossil fuel-funded logjam in this body. They could do it tomorrow if they wanted to. You take the leaders of corporate America in the sectors that I listed and you march them right down to the leader's office, and they say to him ``We are done with you, we are done with your candidates, and we are done with your party until you knock off the obstruction,'' and we would be out on the floor debating climate change within a week. When corporate America takes up its responsibility and uses its power to break the fossil fuel-funded logjam in this body, change on this issue will come swiftly, and we will see bipartisan support for climate action emerge. I was here in 2007, in 2008, and in 2009. In all of those years, there was constant bipartisan activity on climate. The pages would have been awfully young back then. It is nearly 10 years ago now. They would not recognize what is going on. I think there were five different bipartisan climate bills in the Senate--serious ones--that would have really done something significant to head off the climate crisis. All of that stopped dead in January of 2010. It was like a heart attack and a flat line on the EKG--stopped dead because the Supreme Court decided Citizens United. That opened the floodgates of political money into our politics. The fossil fuel money jumped on to that immediately. I think they saw and predicted that decision. I know they asked for it, and they were ready at the starting gun. From that moment when the fossil fuel industry dropped in on the Republican Party and said, ``Nobody is going to cross us on this any longer. You are all going to have to line up on climate denial. We will take out Republicans who cross us. We will do it to Bob Inglis, and we will do it to others. You are done with bipartisanship on this issue,'' that is when it stopped. If the fossil fuel industry would knock it off or if these front groups like the chamber and the National Association of Manufacturers would knock it off or if the rest of corporate America would simply get in here and push back, show up, outpressure them, we could go back and we could be bipartisan in a week. We are not there yet. Most of corporate America is still avoiding this issue in Congress, but they could really make a big difference. That makes it very much still time to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Before I begin, let me say how nice it was to be with the Presiding Officer in her home State at the McCain Institute this weekend.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am very grateful to be joined by the senior Senator from Louisiana on the floor today. I think this is about 240 in my series of ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches, and this is the first time we have a bipartisan presentation on the floor, which is significant to me. I had the great pleasure of visiting Louisiana last month to see firsthand how a combination of decreased sedimentation, erosion, subsidence, habitat degradation, and rising seas are threatening Louisiana's coastline. I was joined by Congressman Garret Graves, former Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority chairman, and I thank the Congressman for sharing his time and expertise of Louisiana's coastal issues. I have also enjoyed working with Louisiana's junior Senator on coastal resiliency efforts, and I look forward to continuing that work. Senator Cassidy and I share home States that are lively, diverse, coastal, proud, and a little bit eccentric and that have great food. There is a lot in common between Louisiana and Rhode Island. Like Rhode Island, Louisiana's coast drives the State's economy and has shaped the State's history and culture. Coastal Louisiana is home to around 2 million people and is responsible for over a quarter of the continental United States' fisheries landings. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Louisiana's wetlands today represent about 40 percent of the wetlands of the continental United States and about 80 percent of the losses. Coastal wetlands are critical habitat and nurseries for commercially important fisheries and other wildlife. They also improve coastal water quality and buffer against storm surge, flooding, and other storm effects. Across the United States, we have lost ground. About half of our original wetlands in the past 200 years are gone. That is significant, and the scale and speed of wetland loss in coastal Louisiana is almost impossible to comprehend. From 1932 until 2010, the State lost nearly 1,900 square miles, or 25 percent, of its coastal land. All the red is land lost from 1932 to 2010. Between 1985 and 2010, the State was losing ground, about a football field's worth, every hour. Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike caused the loss of more than 300 square miles of wetlands. I saw firsthand what Louisiana's shredded coastline looks like from the air. The Mississippi River is one of the most heavily managed rivers in the world and is certainly one of the most important rivers in the world. A combination of flood prevention and irrigation interventions upriver have cut off the tap of sediment that used to flow naturally to Louisiana's wetlands. Now erosion outpaces natural rebuilding. Though erosion is a natural phenomenon, oil and gas development exacerbates the problem. The dredged tracks left in the marsh by exploration and pipelines accelerate erosion, and here you see photos we took from our little airplane of some of those dredged channels. Strong storms, ratcheting up in strength on warmer ocean waters, thanks to climate change, also take a heavy toll on these vulnerable marshes, and you can see how these have been just washed out by the sea down here as well, again, looking out from our little aircraft. Thank you, by the way, to SouthWings for sharing their aircraft with us so we could fly and see this. On top of sediment loss, the Louisiana coastline is also sinking at around one-third of an inch each year due to the natural movement of the Earth's surface, and oil and gas development probably accelerates that process. Then, there is sea level rise. Louisiana's Coastal Planning and Restoration Authority estimates as much as 2.7 feet of sea level rise by 2050. Tulane University researchers concluded that current sea level rise estimates for Louisiana are actually probably too conservative, as the tide gauges used to track sea level rise don't accurately account for the fact that coastal marshes are sinking at the same time. So these current sea level rise projections don't fully express what the relative sea level rise is expected to be. Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Louisiana undertook the daunting task of assembling a Coastal Master Plan. This 50-year, $50 billion plan identifies 124 projects aimed at maintaining 800 square miles of land over time. Experts there hope to reduce over $150 billion in damage by 2067 through a combination of hard infrastructure, restoring shoreline and barrier islands, diverting sediment, and protecting structures by doing things like flood-proofing and elevating them. The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which led the development of this master plan, looked at three potential scenarios for the next 50 years. It considered changes in precipitation, sea level rise, subsidence, and storm frequency and intensity. We will look at the medium scenario. Under the medium scenario, the Coastal Authority expects more precipitation, over 2 feet of sea level rise, stronger though less frequent storms, and a continued slowing of subsidence. The agency then modeled what the coastline would look like 50 years out under these medium conditions with and without this $50 billion investment. Without the $50 billion investment, all that is red is lost to the sea. With the investment, there is still a lot of red lost, but these green areas show areas that are saved, and if you live in one of these green areas, hunt in one of these green areas, and have a business in one of these green areas, it is pretty darn important to you to see that they are saved. Louisiana is at a point of no return, where the forward march of sea level rise and stronger storms will continue to erode the State's shore. Although Louisianians are faced with this discouraging future, I was very impressed by the optimism of the Louisianians I met. I spoke with Governor John Bel Edwards, with CPRA Chairman Chip Kline, CPRA Director Bren Haase, and Deputy for Coastal Activities Megan Terrell and had dinner together with many of them and Senator Cassidy to discuss implementation of this Coastal Master Plan. The Governor, who has said that ``climate change is real; I do not deny it,'' is committed to implementing the Coastal Master Plan. The price tag is hefty, but the potential losses to Louisiana are much greater. I also went to Baton Rouge and met with Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome. While I was there in Baton Rouge, the Mississippi was steadily climbing the levees that protect the city. These are the handrails for the steps down to the Mississippi River, and, as you can see, it was high enough that it was not only over the steps but over the handrails. By March 21 of this year, the number of days at or above flood stage in Baton Rouge was on track to set new records. The mayor pointed out that getting the help communities need to prepare for severe but unnamed storms can be difficult, which is why I so appreciate working with Senator Cassidy on ways to improve our response to coastal resilience, both of ours being Coastal States. Following the release of the fifth National Climate Assessment back in November, Mayor-President Broome said: After the 1,000-year rain event of 2016 in my city, I have been paying close attention to credible projections for future events. . . . the combined impacts of sea level rise and storm surge in the southeast have the potential to cost up to $60 billion each year in 2050 and up to $99 billion in 2090; that level of impact cannot be dismissed or put off for the next generation to deal with. Baton Rouge is home to Louisiana State University, the LSU Tigers, and the impressive Center for River Studies. This is the main room at the Center for River Studies. This is an enormous physical model of the Mississippi River through which actual water runs and through which they can put small, sort of simulated sediment to model sediment flow, and these projectors on the roof can project down onto the surface to show various models and to provide all this color. So that is actually like a flat movie screen with projectors on the surface, which is three-dimensional in the sense that they built a model of the Mississippi River through it. It is an amazing educational tool, and it lets researchers at LSU and at the Army Corps of Engineers and others better understand the sediment dynamics in the Mississippi River. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a terrific article by the legendary Louisiana Pulitzer prize-winning outdoor columnist Bob Marshall.